


Dissuasion

by KathsAvery



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:32:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathsAvery/pseuds/KathsAvery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A peek into Anne Elliot's life before we meet her at the beginning of Persuasion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissuasion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cardamon_k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardamon_k/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

~~~

She opened her eyes.

 

A new day dawned and still she lay in her bed. Something was different, some indefinable, intangible thing, she was not sure what, but it was there. Like a chore left unfulfilled, or music not yet played. Well. No matter how heavy her heart, she could not stay in bed all morning. A small sigh escaped her lips as she rose and slipped her dressing gown over her old worn nightgown. She went to her washstand, one of only a few of her mother’s possessions that Elizabeth had not claimed for her own. It was too plain for her beauty, Elizabeth said. As Anne gently bathed her face, she wished she could wash away this uncomfortable feeling inside her, this feeling of unsteadiness.

~~~

 

She dressed and made her way down to the breakfast room. Her father and Elizabeth were already there, pointedly ignoring her because she had asked to remove veal from that week's menu, as the price was dear and their means were already stretched. Elizabeth had over-ruled Anne's desire to reduce their weekly expenditure, but the mere suggestion of retrenchment offended Sir Walter such that Anne must be placed beneath notice for a time. Elizabeth resented Anne's intrusion into household matters. Thus, Anne had had to endure their petulant, silent recriminations at every meal since. Well, never mind. She preferred the silence.

 

Shortly after the footman had placed tea and toast before Anne, a maid came in with the letter tray, which she held out to Elizabeth, who opened the letter with a little twist to her lip. That meant, Anne knew, that it came from someone Elizabeth didn't care to pay attention to. After reading it, Elizabeth tossed the letter carelessly across the table at Anne, who took it up.

 

“Here’s a note from Mary," Elizabeth said. "She requires Anne for a week to help her because the oldest boy has a cold, and she wants Anne at once. Burlington will hitch up the pony cart this afternoon.”

 

Anne knew it was no use to protest, though she had calls to return and had made plans to drive out with Lady Russell in the afternoon. "Of course I will go if Mary needs me," she said.

 

“Yes, Anne should go to Mary as soon as possible,” Sir Walter agreed, then turned back to his paper.

 

~~~

 

Packing is generally not an easy thing for most people. The struggle of what to take and what to leave behind can confound even a decisive mind. Fortunately, Anne did not suffer from this malady, as she was tossed about between households so often that she reserved a small portion of her clothing to a trunk as to be ready at a moments notice. Sometimes a moment was all the notice she received.

 

Her maid was already waiting in the room, having heard that Anne had been called away to keep Mary company yet again. After giving instructions as to the packing of the trunk, Anne seated herself at her writing desk to write a note to Lady Russell and acquaint her with the circumstances. Seeing that duty done, she rose from her chair and left her room and gently closed the door.

 

~~~

 

As Anne's footsteps disappeared down the stairs, the maid summoned a footman to carry down the trunk. Cook came up a moment later, and she and the maid quietly gathered up the few possessions precious to Anne, to relocate them elsewhere.

 

"Do you think Miss Anne notices? " the maid said, as they moved combs and jewelry to an unused room down the hall.

 

"No call for her to be hearing about it now, is there?" Cook said. She closed the door and motioned the maid away.

 

They would bring them back just before Anne returned, but for now, they were safe from Elizabeth's snooping.

 

Anne did not know that Elizabeth would take these “opportune” days of Anne's absence to look thru her room and decide if anything would look better in Elizabeth's possession. Anne, in her eyes, deserved very little, and Elizabeth, naturally, deserved a great deal more than Anne. The first time this happened Anne came home to find her mother’s pearl comb on Elizabeth's washstand.

 

Anne's maid did not have to convey the pain Anne felt but spoke not of. All the servants could see it written plain on her face. It was Cook’s thought after one of these occasions to gently “remove” some of the things that she held dear to other rooms in the house, temporarily, out of Elizabeth's ken.

 

~~~

 

The weather was fine for Anne's short journey to Uppercross. She was to spend a whole fortnight with Mary and Charles, helping nurse their oldest son, but really keeping Mary company and lifting her sister's spirits. She did enjoy herself with the Musgroves; there was always a dinner at the Great House, or cards, or a trip to a local folly.

 

Indeed, as expected, Anne’s days were full, but since that morning's awakening, she felt as if the world were moving around her, not with her. In moments of self-reflection, she came to suspect the reason for this new sensation. The full realization of it came upon her when she looked at one of Charles' discarded newspapers, therein seeing that familiar name. Her treacherous heart sped up as she read the few - too few! - lines denoting his rise to the rank of commander. With any luck, he would be made captain soon. The world moved around her, yes, it did. And he was moving ever further away from her with all good speed, while she sat still, left behind, unfinished. Undone.

 

Anne felt as though she had been taken outside of herself. Her self-possession seemed all but gone, and she found herself nearly in tears over Mary's boys at times. Four years she had held back, had been resigned to life as Miss Anne Elliot, but now... She now realized that hope had been a silent companion - hope for a reconciliation, hope for a reunion, for a second chance. But she knew now, he would never come to claim her for his own. She had not allowed herself those sorts of daydreams, though sometimes, she could not help but imagine how things might have been had she been more resistant to persuasion and more willing to know her own heart. Now she knew that heart had been four years dreaming of its own volition.

 

The appointed day arrived upon which her trunk was loaded on the carriage to return her to Kellynch Hall. She would truly miss the hustle and bustle of Uppercross. It provided a much-needed distraction, a sense of motion to obscure her own sense of being motionless. Of being powerless. Dazed, she saw herself waving goodbye to the Musgroves. On arrival, she greeted everyone at the estate, but she still felt as though she was sitting apart from everything.

 

~~~

 

As soon as she heard that Anne would be expected within the hour Cook sent up the maid to make quick work of moving Anne's things back to her room.  
Anne opened the door to her room and found the maid standing upon the rug, eyes wide. The girl made a quick curtsey. She'd obviously just done tidying the room.  
"Thank you Jane," Anne said. "You may go." The girl curtseyed again and left the room.

 

~~~

 

Lady Russell dined with them that evening, as did the Jamisons. Sir Walter and Elizabeth gossiped with Mrs. Jamison in such a shameful way and talked such nonsense about rank and the merits of birth and good breeding that Anne was grateful for Lady Russell's company. She noted Sir Walter's new and stylish neckcloth and Elizabeth's elaborate new gown. More expenditures that they could ill afford. It discomfited Anne, who sensed that a reckoning lay in their future, quite out of her power to prevent it.

 

"You look too pale, Anne," Lady Russell scolded. "I must steal you away for a visit myself."

 

"I would be happy to keep you company," Anne smiled. "I shall fix a date with your father, then, and you will come to me for a fortnight. You are a good sister to Mary, but I know she asks rather more of you than is right."

 

"I had an enjoyable visit," Anne protested.

 

"I'm sure you did, indeed," Lady Russell agreed, feeling somewhat uneasy at the change in Anne. She was losing her bloom. Something had surely happened at Uppercross to put Anne out of sorts, and it was nothing good from the look of her.

 

~~~

 

That night as she slipped into her bed her hand instinctively went to a small packet of letters under her pillow.

 

She sat up.

 

They were not there.

 

How long had they been gone?

 

How long had it been since she unfolded the foolscap and let herself dream of what may have been?

 

Had she taken comfort from those words during her stay at Uppercross?

 

She realized that she had placed the letters in a trunk in the attic over a season ago. To hide them from the prying eyes of her sister. She had meant to bring them back right away.

 

She did not know she was crying till a sob shook her.  This was to be her life; tied to the whims of her father and sister, never to have a home of her own, bound to stillness and sameness, frozen and unfinished. How had it taken four years to realize it?

 

Resolving to start anew in the morning and to realign her expectations for the future, to say nothing of putting away foolish dreams, she allowed herself to mourn a loss, the depth of which she had not known until this moment.

 

 

And she closed her eyes, and wept.

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> You requested a peek into the years between when Anne rejected Wentworth and when they meet again. I am better at writing smaller slices of time, so I decided to focus on the moment of 'lost hope'. I feel the Anne we see at the beginning of the book is a woman without hope, but I don't feel she was this person even one or 2 years after rejecting him. So I wanted to show that moment when I believe she lost her 'spark of hope' so that the ending of this fic makes you want to pick up the book again and go on that journey with her again. 
> 
> I know its not the happiest of fics, but I hope you like it anyway. :)


End file.
